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People with goals succeed
because they know where they're going.
Earl Nightingale
 Goals are specific material states toward which we direct our
attention and activities. These material states can be a physical object such as
a new home, a circumstance such as a better job, a psychological trait such as
patience, or a bodily condition such as fitness.
 | Goals help us to concentrate our efforts in a chosen direction. When we
have goals, we know which activities to engage and value, and which ones to
ignore as irrelevant. |
| Goals stimulate us. They inspire us, fascinate us, motivate us, and spur
on our imagination. When we have a goal, we have a reason to get out of bed in
the morning, and to perform activities. This motivation is important because our
purpose for being in this world is to learn about designs through our
interaction with them. We learn very little when we are sedentary. |
| Goals set a standard. They are an ideal against which we measure our
weaknesses, our growth, and our fulfillment. |
| There is a time to have no goals. |
| Our goals originate from various sources.
 | The ego. The ego's job is to create the material environment that
satisfies the fundamental, design needs of our human life. Its goals are to
create such things as a home, a food supply, and a source of income. |
| Dysfunctional elements in our designs. Their goal is to discharge their
residual charge from previous design encounters. If we have a residual charge
from the angry thoughts that we created previously, the element's goal will be
to find someone upon whom we can discharge this anger. |
| Intuition. Intuition gives us a vision of something that will be useful
in our lives, for our material environment and for our spiritual education
regarding designs. Intuition comes from spirit, which has an overview of all
dynamic factors in a situation, so its goals encompass and satisfy all of our
needs:
 | The needs of the ego to create our human world. |
| The needs of the dysfunctional elements to discharge their residual
charge. |
| The needs of our true self |
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Techniques for creating and attaining goals.
| Design-work. We generate energy tones such as self confidence, courage,
and pleasure. We enjoy the tasks and are more willing to perform them.
| Affirmations. We can use affirmations to develop our self confidence,
courage, stamina, and other attributes that will help us to attain our
goals. |
| Directed Imagination. We visualize the goal and the intermediate
steps. |
| Modeling. We rehearse the psychological and material conditions that
will exist after we attain our goal. If our goal is to be more patient, we
act as if we are patient. |
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| We develop our intuition. Intuition gives us various types of
information:
| Intuition can provide the goal itself. |
| Intuition can guide us toward that goal. It is aware of all dynamic
factors that lie between us and the goal. It can tell us what to do, what
not to do, when to proceed with a phase of a project, and where to get
information or help. |
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| We select goals that are meaningful to us. |
| We clarify our goals. Sometimes a goal doesn't properly address our
underlying intent. We may want to be a business person, but our deeper intent is
to be self employed and a business seems like the best way to become self
employed. If we recognize the intent, we can find a more effective means of
fulfilling it, and we can discover that the superficial goal brings no
satisfaction anyway. If we want to be successful as a business person but we
really want to be successful to prove that I'm a worthwhile person, our goal
needs to be the development of self esteem rather than the creation of a
business. |
| We select specific goals. A specific goal is "to reduce my weight to
120 pounds" rather than "to lose weight." When our goals are
precise, we know when we have attained them, so we feel a sense of completion
and accomplishment. To lose weight is less satisfying because we don't know when
we have succeeded. |
| We select verifiable goals. For those same reasons, goals need to be
verifiable, 120 pounds can be confirmed on a bathroom scale. A goal of financial
security can be measured in terms of dollars in the bank, a particular
investment portfolio, or a job in a business with minimal turn over. |
| We select positive goals. An example of a positive goal is to
"establish peaceful relations with my neighbor" rather than "to
stop hating my rude neighbor." The positive goal creates design elements,
thoughts, images, energy tones, and actions, of harmony and balance. In
contrast, the negative goal implants elements of hatred and rudeness into our
own designs as we ponder those traits in the neighbor and then we may become
hateful and rude in order to discharge the elements. |
| We can select goals that depend on circumstances we control. In the
example of friendly relations with a neighbor, we will be more productive and
successful if we create goals that depend solely on our actions such as "to
maintain my peace of mind when dealing with the neighbor." If our goals
are internal, the following events are likely to occur:
| We experience the friendly relations, even if the friendliness is all on
our part. We cannot control the neighbor's actions and attitude. Some
people are simply unreasonable and unfriendly. |
| We increase the possibility for a friendly response from our
neighbor if
we are acting from peacefulness rather than an attempt to manipulate the neighbor
into being peaceful. |
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| We can have goals in all areas of our life. Goals are useful in our
career, family life, health, skills, fitness, hobbies, recreation,
friendships, finances, personality enhancement, intellectual development, and
relationships. Some of these goals can be short term, others must be long
term. Look for areas in which you are directionless. The symptoms of this are
anxiety and lack of progress. The anxiety is stagnant energy and we can use
that energy to invigorate us for, our work. |
| We can break down our goals into steps. We gain these benefits when we
divide our big goals into smaller goals.
| A small goal is less intimidating. Remodeling our home may seem like an
overwhelming project, but we can be comfortable with the idea of painting
one room. After painting that room, we paint the next room, and then the
next room. |
| A small goal is easier to schedule. We may not feel that we have enough
time to remodel our home, but we can find three hours to paint the first
room. |
| Each small goal gives us a logical point at which to evaluate our
progress and the validity of the project itself. |
| We gain satisfaction at the completion of each step, instead of
postponing that pleasure until the end of the big project. This satisfaction
is a type of reward |
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| We reward ourselves when we reach a goal. These rewards motivate us,
and they soothe any feeling of struggle that has occurred during our efforts.
We can reward ourselves in various ways:
| We indulge the pleasures from the goal itself. If the goal was an amount
of money, we spend some of it on a celebration. |
| We indulge the natural psychological phenomena that occur when we attain
a goal:
| An increase in self confidence and self esteem. |
| Gratitude for any good luck and personal assistance that we received. |
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| We learn from the experience. We will be more successful in achieving
other goals if we reflect on our new understanding, which can include:
| Technical knowledge. In the home remodeling task, we learned about
the techniques of painting a room. |
| Problem solving skills. |
| New perceptions regarding our designs and the dynamics of spirit as
portrayed in this world of material circumstances. |
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When we are motivated
by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love
that needs expressing, then we truly live life.
Greg Anderson
Next topic: Motivation
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